Canterbury Region

New Zealand’s largest area of flat land, the Canterbury Plains cover more than 12,000 square kilometers. Once covered by forest, the coastal areas were occupied by a large Maori population in pre-European times, these early hunters using fire to flush the giant flightless moa from the forests. Over hundreds of years most of the forest and the birds were destroyed, leaving the landscape barren until the first European settlers arrived to plough and irrigate the land. They established vast wheatfields and the area became known as the granary of New Zealand. Today the area is dissected by long, constantly changing, braided rivers. With its shifting quick-sands, the Rakaia River, was once a formidable barrier to early settlers. Now spanned by the country's longest bridge, the Rakaia with its bountiful numbers of salmon and trout, draws anglers from all over the country.

 

Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament

1CATHEDRAL OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT

The trip begins on Barbadoes Street at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrement in Christchurch.
The impressive Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, commonly known as the Christchurch Basilica, is one of New Zealand's finest classical buildings and the most important twentieth-century church in Christchurch. Designed by F. W. Petrie, construction began in 1901 with the building was opened in 1904. Designed in a Renaissance, Italian basilica style, the church breaks convention with the placement of its Italianate green copper-roofed dome above the sanctuary, which coupled with its Byzantine apse gives added grandeur and theatre to the high altar set in the tribune. The nave and chancel roofs are supported by colonnades of ionic columns and the entrance facade of the cathedral is flanked by twin towers in the manner of many of Europe's great renaissance churches. Likened to St Paul’s Cathedral in London, it is actually closer in design to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Sheathed in Oamaru Limestone, the cost of the building soared and a special bill had to be pushed through parliament by Premier Richard Seddon to help finance the project.

2ASHBURTON

Drive south on Barbadoes Street 0.2 km and continue south on Waltham Road 0.9 km. Turn right onto Brougham Street and drive west 2.5 km onto Jerrold Street South. Continue 0.5 km onto the Christchurch Southern Motorway and drive east 2.6 km. Turn right onto Curletts Road and continue 1.3 km before turning left onto Blenheim Road. Continue 1.1 km to the roundabout and take the second exit onto Main South Road and SH1. Drive south 78 km to Ashburton.
The first settlers arrived in this district bounded by the Rakaia and Rangitata Rivers in the 1850s and found it an inhospitable 'desert', without trees and buffeted by continual nor'westers that raised clouds of gritty dust. The determined pioneers began working the plains and within decades thousands of hectares were producing wheat and other crops. The open country suited livestock and vast flocks of sheep grazed the plains. The town was surveyed in 1863–64, supplying services to the local farms while also supporting a number of industries, including flour mills, dairy factories, freezing works, brickworks and a glassworks. Grain stores as well as stock and station agencies, lined the main road and the main trunk railway line south from Christchurch, which reached Ashburton in 1874 and Dunedin in 1878. Today Ashburton features magnificent stands of trees and a number of impressive brick buildings, including the Catholic Church of the Holy Name and its neighbouring presbytery, both built in 1907. These and the old houses in Havelock and Winter Streets make up part of the towns historic precinct. In Ashburton you can still read the local Ashburton Guardian, a newspaper that dates back to 1879. This is the only survivor of the Daily newspapers that were once a feature of many Canterbury towns. The oldest surviving metropolitan daily newspaper in the country is still the Christchurch Press, founded in 1861, its older competitor founded in 1851, the Lyttelton Times, becoming a victim of a celebrated newspaper war in 1935.

 

A restored traction engine at Tinwald.

 

 

3PLAINS PIONEER VILLAGE AND RAILWAY Museum

Continue south on SH1 2.5 km to Tinwald. The museum is on the right .
A stretch of the Tinwald–Mt Somers railway line, which closed in 1967, is kept in operation at the Plains Vintage Railway and Historical Museum south of Tinwald. The museum features a fascinating range of fully restored and operational trains and traction engines brought back to life by dedicated enthusiasts. A restored K-88 Rogers locomotive, recovered from the Oreti River in Southland, once hauled the first Christchurch-Dunedin express in 1878. A collection of some of the district's early buildings has been relocated in the 'village'.

 

 

 

 

4GERALDINE

Continue south 21.3 km on SH1 and turn right onto the Rangitata Orari Bridge Highway. Drive west 9.1 km and continue on the Main North Road 5.9 km into Geraldine.
Pleasantly tucked into the folds of the surrounding hills, Geraldine dates back to 1854 when surveyor Samuel Hewlings built the first bark hut in Talbot Street. A number of the early settlers' cottages survive in this picturesque town which uses trees as milestones. In the interesting Vintage Car and Machinery Museum on Lower Talbot Street are more than 30 cars dating back to 1905, a collection of tractors from as early as the 1920s and the world's last surviving 1929 Spartan biplane.

 

5TEMUKA

Continue 2.3 km southeast on Talbot Street onto Winchester Geraldine Road and continue 8.6 km, turn right onto Temuka Orari Highway and SH1 and drive south 6.8 km to Temuka.
Gazetted as a town in 1858 and surveyed in 1863, Temuka was established as an industrial town with boiling-down and tannery works, a flour mill, cheese factory and potteries. Today Temuka has one of New Zealand’s best preserved early 20th-century main streets with a collection of delightful historic commercial buildings including the brick Courthouse (1904) which is now a museum on Waiotahi Street, and the Post Office (1902) behind it just off the main road. Hope Cottage at 36 Alexandra Street and Mendelssohn House in Holly Terrace, as well as the huge redwood trees on King Street, all date back to the pioneering days of the settlement. Temuka is the country's leading manufacturing area for ceramic ware, an industry that began in the 1880s. The clay comes from the Kakahu deposits near Geraldine and has been dug from here since the 1860s. The kilns at Temuka have fired the clay into various products including tiles, bricks, tableware and porcelain electrical components since 1868. By the 1930s the Temuka’s pottery factory had begun producing teapots, vases and electric jugs as well as the famous, heavyweight New Zealand Railways cup and saucer. In the 1970s it introduced stoneware dinner sets which along with other early pieces are now keenly sought by collectors. The tableware is made from a clay similar to that used for electrical insulators and as a result is virtually unbreakable.

Timaru - Basilica

6TIMARU

Continue south on SH1 from Temuka 17.7 km into Timaru.
In 1837 Joseph Price set up a whaling station at Patiti Point, south of present-day Timaru. It was another 15 years before two brothers, Robert and William Rhodes, bought the land between the Opihi and Pareora rivers which they named the Levels, and later shrewdly began subdivision on the southern side of an area which the government had reserved for a town. When the first 100 settlers arrived in 1859 on the Strathallan, from England, 60 houses had already been built on the far-sighted Rhodes' land. A further 360 immigrants arrived between 1862 and 1863 and by 1868 the town had become a borough. The fortunes of Timaru have largely been linked to its port. At first ships anchored in the shelter of basalt reefs and many ships were wrecked along Timaru’s coast until 1878 when construction began on breakwaters to create an artificial harbour. Building of the harbour changed the coastline with shingle accumulating south of the harbour and sand piling up at the foot of clay cliffs to the north, forming the beach at Caroline Bay. Timaru's first permanent lighthouse was built in 1863 to guide in ships at night, replacing the earlier method of setting a tar barrel alight. The two lanterns in the first lighthouse were not as effective as a burning tar barrel, so in 1878 a 12 m high tower was built with a fixed lantern. This was later replaced by a kerosene lamp, followed by a gas beacon and eventually an electronic beacon, during the 92 years the lighthouse operated as the main navigation light for the port. Today the lighthouse can be seen in Maori Park at the northern end of Caroline Bay.